How AI/Cognitive Will Strengthen Your Approach to Unified Endpoint Management

AI and cognitive technology are driving forces behind much of today’s innovation. IDC predicts that 40% of all digital transformation initiatives will be supported by AI/cognitive models by 2019. But when it comes to unified endpoint management (UEM), you don’t have to wait. IBM MaaS360 with Watson is already using AI/cognitive technologies to improve the way IT and security leaders manage endpoints and mobile devices.

When used in combination, UEM and AI/cognitive make quite the tandem. The IT teams that oversee organizations of all sizes across all industries gain an intelligent advantage that results in cost savings, reduced complexity and productivity boosts. If your mobile device management (MDM), enterprise mobility management (EMM), or UEM solution does not afford this level of intelligence, you are using yesterday’s technologies to address tomorrow’s challenges.

The power AI/cognitive brings to UEMWhen combined with UEM, an AI/cognitive approach pulls from both structured (e.g., a threat intelligence platform) and unstructured (e.g., news, blogs, social media) data sources to deliver enterprise IT teams with actionable intelligence on emerging security threats and opportunities for improvement.

These insights vary across each customer, as they’re dependent on the context of the endpoint and mobile environment (e.g., enrolled devices, OS versions, apps deployed). These are delivered in the form of insights, which provide adequate context to understand what happened, what can happen, and what should be done in response.

Unified Endpoint Management for Dummies

Read on to receive an overview of unified endpoint management (UEM), why it’s necessary, how it addresses complex problems encountered in the modern enterprise, and where IT can turn for help.

A real-world exampleA cognitive tool contextually evaluates a customer’s endpoint environment, comparing it to information that’s externally available from thousands of unstructured and structured data sources. It automatically discovers that 10% of Android devices are missing the latest security update. An IT team receives an insight on their dashboard that alerts them about the small percentage of enrolled devices that need attention. Not only do they discover that their Androids require an update, they’re able to learn more about the vulnerability—and best practices for responding. With just a few quick clicks, they’re able to see which devices are affected, apply the needed update, and get on with their day.

Without cognitive capabilities, the IT team would have had to discover this on their own, a time- and resource-consuming endeavor. Once discovered, they’d need to research it and determine which devices were impacted. Then they would need to find out how to react. Not to mention—had they not discovered it in time, the vulnerability could have been exploited.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of this example: OS version assessments are just one of many items that IT teams are responsible for on a daily basis. When multiplied, it’s difficult to know how many events like this could possibly go unnoticed. Especially by teams that are not 100% dedicated to administering mobile devices. One thing is for sure, working in an ever-evolving technological world, IT could sure use a helping hand to stay on top of it all.

IBM MaaS360 with Watson is the industry’s first and only unified endpoint management solution that empowers its customers with AI/cognitive capabilities. MaaS360 Advisor enables IT teams to discover best practices for user productivity, mitigate potential security threats and obtain general information that is pertinent to efficient operations.

MaaS360 Advisor enables IT teams to discover, understand, assess and act on insights that pertain to all aspects of the endpoint environment. Other organizations must conduct these tasks manually, which consumes considerable time and resources, while opening them up to the potential for undiscovered risks that can negatively impact operations, security or compliance. Administrators gain insights across a wide range of areas to more efficiently manage endpoint operations and security, including:

Information on upcoming operating system version releases.

Best practices for security policies.

Visibility into specific at-risk devices with context surrounding their vulnerabilities and remediation steps that can be taken.

Mobile app recommendations based on app use and sentiment analysis of the current application catalog.

Recommendations to facilitate end user notification and education.

Take hold of the future with MaaS360According to Forrester Research, AI/cognitive computing combined with UEM will drive success in the enterprise heading into the next decade—as organizations of all sizes across all industries will strive to leverage actionable insights and deep analytics to drive competitive advantage. However, with IBM MaaS360 with Watson, there’s no need to wait. The future is now. Visit IBM.com/MaaS360 to begin putting AI/cognitive computing to work for your organization’s endpoints, end users and everything in between.